The present invention relates to a method of and apparatus for supporting of making a formatted document, and more particularly to a method of and apparatus for supporting of making formatted documents such as specifications, account sheets, and the like which are related to each other. The invention also relates to a method of and apparatus for supporting of making a formatted document suitable for making a formatted document form matching the type of software systems to be developed and for producing a relation between such formatted document forms.
Attention has been recently paid to a method of managing information by using a concept of "hypertext". For example, necessary information for giving a comment or referring to other information can be readily searched if a part of a document is arranged to be related to another document (such relation is expressed by terms "link" or "extend a link" hereinafter where applicable). A concept "hypertext" implies such information management by a computer, and includes a set of information (hereinafter called a "node") such as a document, picture, drawing, and a set of links between such information. As described in "A Grand Vision", by Janet Fiderio, Byte, October 1988, pp. 237 to 245, McGRAW-HILL PUBLICATION under information management by using the concept "hypertext", it becomes possible for a user to display main information on a display unit and then display associated information such as comments when necessary. It is also possible for a user to define the type of link and give a specific relation between nodes.
A method of supporting of generating a form of a formatted document such as a specification to be described when developing software, is described in "A Distributed Network Environment and its Community", Information Processing, April 1987, vol. 28. No. 4, pp. 463 to 471 wherein the forms of formatted documents such as specifications to be described when developing software are stored beforehand in a predetermined file server, and a user searches and derives a desired formatted document form from the file server when necessary.
There is known a system having a function to manage the relation between formatted document forms, as described in "New SWB Program design Support Tools/MCD Tools", Information Processing Society of Japan, 37th National meeting, Speech Papers, pp. 882 to 883, 1988, wherein an editor is automatically started in accordance with a fixed relation between a formatted document form area and another formatted document form area.
There is disclosed in JP-A-61-194532 a method of managing and guiding manufacturing process software by its process name.